


And They Were Roommates

by hooksnolan



Category: Taking Back Sunday
Genre: An AU where everything is the same but their wives and children don't exist, God bless Mark O'Connell, I'm not saying John and Adam were together seven years prior but I'm not NOT saying that, M/M, Reconciliation, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22621768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksnolan/pseuds/hooksnolan
Summary: Adam hasn't seen or heard from John in seven years. Mark has been angling to get John and Shaun back in the band for years. Finally Adam agrees to seeing if it'll work, leaving Mark to "figure it out."Mark's brilliant plan involves renting a house that sleeps five in some nowhere town.The house sleeps five, but there's only one bed left by the time John and Adam both get there.
Relationships: Adam Lazzara/John Nolan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	And They Were Roommates

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fic I wanted to read but nobody else was writing. I took it upon myself to write it, so I hope somebody else out there wanted something like this too.  
> I thought this was going to be a funny, cute short little "oh no there's only one bed!!!!," but I guess I listened to too much Adele.  
> Set in an AU world where everything is exactly the same except neither of them were ever married with children.  
> Also, I got too attached to the working title, so it is what it is.

Mark had been angling for this for years.

With every little spat between band members, Mark had casually mentioned John and Shaun. He had kept in touch with them both; he’d drummed for the Straylight Run demos, having walked the finest line of whether or not he would leave with them, but more than anybody, Mark had poured his heart and soul into Taking Back Sunday.

Eddie may have formed the band, but Mark was the life behind it.

And Mark was _stubborn_.

There was very little Mark couldn’t do once he got it in his head. He’d worked out chords for songs well into the night. He had no memory on his phone and just one app, which he used to demo. Despite his Long Island guido appearance, he was easily the hardest working member of Taking Back Sunday, and now it seemed all of his hard work was paying off.

Matt had crossed one too many lines far too many times, always making little digs about Adam’s technical abilities as a singer, always angling for a bigger cut than the other guys, claiming he’d put in more work. He’d made a comment about taking a break and then coming back in six months to start writing, as if that was his call to make and not a group decision.

Finally, they’d had enough, and over a conference call, Matt was out.

“So John and Shaun,” Mark had said, trailing off. He’d known that Straylight Run was on an indefinite hiatus. The kids had stopped showing up to shows - they’d started playing to emptier and emptier rooms, until the band was more of a money pit than anything, and Mark had known it was a significant blow for both of them. Shaun started filling out applications to become a regular, non-touring member of society, and John continued working hard on his solo music.

Some days, Mark had sounded like a broken record. He had John and Shaun’s contact information. He could get in touch with them.

And then, finally, Eddie and Adam caved.

 _Figure it out_ Adam texted, after a long string of texts from Mark, all mentioning John and Shaun’s semi-unemployed status, the need to fill a void in their own band.

Maybe Adam had had too many drinks or maybe there was this sense of loneliness, the feeling that something had been missing for far too long.

The next morning, Adam woke up to a confirmation email about an old house in Tornillo, Texas.

Tornillo, Texas?

He blinked a few times as he read the email confirming a house rental in some border town in Texas a few times.

Mark’s text came in at that moment.

_Shaun adn John in_

Adam scrolled back up through the texts, quickly piecing together the events of the evening. At some point, after a few drinks, he’d agreed to meet up with Shaun and John again, telling Mark to _figure it out_ before promptly passing out on his dad’s couch.

Apparently, _figuring it out_ to Mark meant booking a house in _Tornillo, Texas_ (Adam had sworn off Texas unless absolutely necessary, what the _fuck,_ Mark) that had beds for five people, according to the little number 5 next to the icon of a person on the email confirmation he’d been forwarded at some point the previous night. He groaned and pulled the blanket over his head.

This was going to _suck_.

* * *

This _sucked_.

Adam could not possibly understand _why_ his flight was delayed, unless it was a cruel trick the universe was playing on him because it knew how anxious he already _was_ about this whole situation. Adam’s stomach had been in knots since the day he’d woken up to Mark’s big idea - reuniting in some town in the middle of nowhere, where nobody would figure out what they were up to (Adam was pretty sure the band wasn’t _that_ big of a deal to the random person, but he let Mark have this one), and trying it out.

Mark kept saying they had no expectations, they would see if things would gel after so many years (seven, but Adam wasn’t really counting, was he?) of being apart, now that they were older and a bit more mature, but Adam was almost certain that if this didn’t work, the band was done.

It was a lot to pin on this whole thing - the future of their band, the one career any of them had ever truly known. It had been Adam’s dream to be in a band, and there really was no plan B, since he didn’t actually graduate high school. Mark had taken a few classes at community college, but Adam had booked a flight to New York after meeting Eddie in that Waffle House all those years ago and never looked back. 

So the butterflies were strong in his stomach, anxiety filling him with dread the longer he had to wait on the plane. He wasn’t sure what he would _say_ to John after so many years of not speaking to him. Things had ended on a particularly bad note - he could still hear John in his head, talking about his _complete lack of character_.

Now that he was seven years removed from all of that, he could see John’s point, but it didn’t mean that it didn’t suck still. The words were clear as they bounced around in his mind, even though he couldn’t remember exactly what _he’d_ said in response. It had just been the last fight of many, and after all these years they blended together. He couldn’t tell one green room from another, one shitty truck stop from the next. The backdrop to these fights jumbled in his brain, but the feeling of them - the anger, the frustration, the guilt, and the hurt - was clear as day.

It was different with Shaun, who had more or less been collateral damage in the explosion that was Adam and John’s personal life. Adam never really had a problem with Shaun, and he couldn’t imagine Shaun had too much of a problem with him, but Adam had been too close to John. There were too many emotions caught between them, all those lines that had been blurred.

Adam could remember showing up to John’s apartment all those years ago with nothing more than a backpack full of clothes. He’d booked a roundtrip flight to New York, figuring the whole thing was a trial run where he played bass for Eddie’s band, but it turned into something more.

That return trip ticket was somewhere in a box, unused.

Adam and John had found a second-hand mattress from a friend and lugged it down the steps to their basement apartment. It wasn’t a conversation. Adam just moved into John’s apartment full time, their twin-sized mattresses squeezed into one bedroom and most definitely a fire hazard. Between guitars and clothes and CDs, there was hardly space to walk between them.

They had lived on top of one another, and their friendship had formed fast - a forest fire burning bright. Adam found himself up all hours of the night with John, bouncing lyric ideas off one another until songs were formed brilliantly between them. 

Adam couldn’t help but wonder if they’d scorched the earth between them though. It was possible there wasn’t anything there to salvage, and this was the part that unnerved him. They had worked so well together back then, seeming to live inside one another’s mind and songwriting had never been easier. There was a magic between them once. If it wasn’t there, a small ember in the ashes of their friendship, then he wasn’t sure if this thing was possible. As long as he didn’t speak to John, the possibility of reconciliation was there. But in a few hours, they would know for sure.

* * *

By the time Adam’s flight landed, Shaun and Mark (who had flown in from Long Island together) and Eddie had already headed to the house to unpack and grocery shop for the extended weekend they’d planned. Adam hoped this grocery shopping also included copious amounts of liquor. His nerves were no better than they had been earlier, and the turbulence on the plane hadn’t helped one bit, tightening the knots in his stomach. He didn’t necessarily plan on spending the whole time drunk, but he would need a shot or two of whiskey to take the edge off things. He didn’t know where John was - if he was with the guys or somewhere in the air - because even though he had John’s number now, he still hadn’t brought himself to reach out.

He knew he would have to be the one to apologize - years of therapy (and that brief stint in rehab) had given him plenty of opportunities to reflect on all this.

Grabbing his backpack and guitar case, Adam found a cab to take him to the address - the rental car somewhere with Mark and Shaun. It was a long, silent ride while Adam tapped out and then deleted text after text, trying to come up with a way to break the years of silence between him and John. His fingers would move without permission before his mind caught up and deleted them. Nothing seemed quite right; there were no words to bridge that seven year span between them.

The last fight had been in Rochester. Adam could remember that detail. He could remember John overhearing something on the bus, and the yelling. He could remember Neil standing there at a loss. There had been fights before, all across the US, and Neil had managed to keep the machine chugging along, but there after a show in Rochester, something seemed to destroy the foundation. It seemed with the tour over, there was no point in moving forward.

It was eerily quiet when the cab pulled up to the house, and if it was a movie, the dust from the dirt road would have been a cloud behind the cab as it peeled out - as if it couldn’t stand to be on that barren plot of land one second longer, the tension in the air choking out the surroundings. Adam had no choice but to retrieve the key Mark had said he’d left under a rock (real creative) and open the door.

The air in the house smelled stale, like nobody had opened a window in ages. But then again, how often was a random house in the middle of nowhere being rented out? The foyer opened up to a living room full of tacky, mismatched and out-dated furniture. Turning down a hall, Adam found a series of doors, opening one to find a bedroom with two twin-sized beds, already claimed by Mark and what he supposed was Shaun. Adam felt a little like Goldilocks, opening doors, trying to find the bed that was _just right_. Behind the second door was a bathroom, and behind the third door was a single bed with Eddie’s backpack slung across it.

There was one last door, and Adam could already feel the bad news settling in his stomach before he opened it to confirm that this was going to be all wrong.

The house slept five, and the first three beds were single beds. 

There was one door left.

Adam didn’t need to be good at math to figure out this equation.

So when he opened the door, he was not even surprised to find a double bed behind it.

Adam stood still in the doorway, unable to process. In the distance, he could hear the door open and the sound of something being set down on the tile floor. 

“Hello?” A distantly familiar voice called, and a shiver ran up Adam’s spine.

It had been so long.

Adam barely had time to think before the sounds of his two other bandmates (plus Shaun) echoed through the house. He could hear the rustling of plastic bags, the clinking of glass bottles. The door slammed shut, and Adam inhaled deeply before setting his guitar and backpack down.

This was it.

Everybody was in the kitchen by the time Adam finally emerged from the bedrooms. A bottle of something was already opened, poured into cups. There was a bag of chips on the counter. The conversation was loud, Mark talking about something with his hands flying, getting very into it while Shaun laughed along. Eddie was opening a beer, passing one off to John.

 _John_.

They were going to have to share that bedroom - that bed - unless they got two of the other guys to agree to the trade. Back in the day, this would have been fine. Adam had slept in the same bed as John plenty of times, always winding up as roommates in hotels because nobody else wanted to room with them, both of them complete night owls, writing songs well into morning. And back at their own apartment, Adam could remember waking up in John’s twin-sized bed more than once, bodies pressed flush after a night of too much drinking, pants around his ankles and a tee shirt half off.

And then one day, John’s things were in boxes and he watched quietly, sitting on the corner of his own bed as John moved them out of the room.

“Hey,” Adam said after a moment, the memories swimming in his head.

“You made it,” Mark cheered, quickly grabbing a red plastic cup and pushing it into Adam’s hand. Adam could smell the liquor inside and mouthed a silent _thank you_ to him because yes, he was going to need this.

“Hey,” Shaun said next, and Adam’s lips quirked up into a smile. They may not have spoken in a while, but Adam wasn’t necessarily worried about his friendship with Shaun. Adam wasn’t sure if Shaun was actually capable of hating _anybody_ , though things could have changed in the seven year silence. Adam’s eyes were still focused on John’s hair, longer than he’d ever worn it when they were friends back then. 

“Hamburgers for dinner,” Eddie announced, and Adam gave a nod because of course Eddie would commandeer the grill. It was nice to have that semblance of normalcy because standing in a room with John fucking Nolan was _not_ normal.

“Hey,” John finally echoed, turning to look at Adam.

“There’s one bed,” Adam blurted out, unable to think of anything else to say when faced with this more grownup version of the best friend he let slip through his fingers what felt like eons ago.

Adam inhaled, took a sip of the strong drink Mark had fixed (God bless Mark) and then swallowed hard. “Sleeps _five_ , Mark, but _four_ beds.”

“Huh?” 

“There are four beds,” he repeated, taking another sip of the drink, “and y’all already claimed yours.”

“I didn’t,” John said, holding the beer bottle casually as he looked from Adam to the rest of the guys.

“Yeah,” Adam answered, raising his eyebrows over the rim of the red cup, ready to gulp down the liquor. “Me either.”

* * *

Standing in the bedroom, surveying the _one bed_ , Adam looked over to John who was looking at the _one bed._ Nobody had volunteered to swap, all of them apparently very content with their own single bed situation. 

Also, Eddie moved too much in his sleep and liked it too cold, and Mark snored loudly, and Adam was pretty sure he could remember Shaun being a blanket hog. If things were different between him and John, this would have actually been the ideal set up.

It was how they would have done it years ago.

“I’ll sleep on the couch,” John offered, turning to look at Adam.

Despite the obvious differences - the long hair, a fuller beard more on his face than neck - John looked so familiar. Adam’s heart _ached_ because even though they were standing no more than two feet apart, there were still seven years and so many unspoken things between them. There were also _too many_ spoken things between them, insults spat out in the heat of the moment, that Adam wished he could take back but couldn’t figure out where to start or if it would even be possible.

“I can,” Adam volunteered, figuring this was a good place to start. Hadn’t John accused him of being selfish so many years ago? Offering to take the couch was the decent thing to do.

Years ago, Adam might have teased John about needing the bed because he was older, but the air in the room was tense, and Adam wasn’t sure if the joke would go over well. John was virtually a stranger now.

“I mean,” John began to answer, scratching at his head, a t-shirt that was a little too small lifting from the waistband of his jeans. Adam kept his eyes trained on John’s face, ignoring that pale expanse of skin, noting that he still had that crooked tooth. Adam’s own had been fixed in the years that had passed.

“I will,” Adam insisted, picking up his backpack. 

After all, he had plenty of experience sleeping on couches.

Adam couldn’t stay in that apartment once John left, finding the once-cramped space practically cavernous with all of John’s belongings cleared out. He found himself sleeping on Eddie’s couch until his friend Angel reached out to him. He needed a roommate, and while he lived in Brooklyn, it was better than sleeping on a couch at Eddie’s, where he could hear him and his girlfriend at all hours of the night. In Brooklyn, Adam could never seem to find a parking space close to his building, but he made friends with the owner of the bodega where he bought his cigarettes and slept on a second-hand mattress Angel’s old roommate left behind.

An extended weekend on the couch wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

Adam had slept on a couch in Texas once too, after he’d moved out of the house he’d bought and couldn’t make into a home with his now ex-fiancee. He couldn’t stand being under that roof, too many empty spaces where her things once sat. His neighbor had graciously offered up his couch, keeping Adam from going too far off the deep end, until his father called him home.

He slept on a couch there too, but he insisted it would only be temporary. 

* * *

There was a balcony off the kitchen which overlooked what felt like miles of barren land before the pecan trees started up. Adam felt a bit more relaxed now that they’d found some blankets, and he took a spare pillow and claimed the couch as his own. (The alcohol and cigarette after cigarette probably helped too, the ashtray next to him slowly filling with stubbed out butts.) Eddie was at the grill, the scent of hamburger filling the air, and Mark was pulling up demos of songs that never made it to records, finger drumming against the edge of the outdoor table, while every once in a while somebody would toss out a fragment of a memory related to a riff or a lyric.

“Hey,” John said, stepping next to Adam and resting his cup on the edge of the railing. Adam gave a little upwards nod, that universal sign for _hello_. “You sure about the couch?” 

“Yeah,” Adam answered, taking a sip of his drink. There weren’t any words to adequately describe how awkward this scene was. The last time he’d spoken to John, they’d yelled at one another. John had packed up his things and left - no amount of convincing by friends and bandmates and management could get him to stay.

“Mark said you were living with your dad again?” It was a statement phrased like a question. Adam was sure John wanted to know the story there because he had to remember the less than ideal relationship Adam had had with his father, months of silence between them only ending when Phil would post on their little Yahoo! Forum asking Adam to call collect if he had to. 

“Yeah, I’m,” Adam began, letting out a heavy sigh as he looked over at John and met his eyes. “Between places right now.”

John had to know, right? Mark wouldn’t just mention that Adam was living in North Carolina again, on his father’s couch without mentioning that he’d left New York for Texas. Mark probably filled him in on Adam’s engagement, one more failed relationship in a long line of them. He’d been able to write one song about it, and in the aftermath of that relationship, he’d found himself missing John more than ever because John would have just _known_ what Adam was trying to convey, would have been able to give that feeling the right words. Writing without him had been a much lonelier endeavor, second-guessing himself because he couldn’t trust anybody the way he’d trusted John.

“That’s a long way from New York,” John pointed out, which was a very _duh_ thing to say, and it made Adam wonder if he _didn’t_ know about that brief stint in Texas.

“We uh, stopped… Well like, we didn’t live near each other.” Eddie lived in Ohio now, and Fazzi had called California home. They would rent out a place and write when they had to, or they sent each other garage band demos and voice memos. It wasn’t like writing with John, when they shuffled through the lyrics they’d written down on any piece of paper they had available.

“Are things...better with him?” John asked, and he looked _concerned_. Adam felt a pang in his heart because even in his wildest dreams, he would have never imagined John being concerned about him, about his living situation, in the present day.

“It’s...working,” Adam said, not answering the question John had asked. John gave a lopsided smile, as if he understood that meant _no_ , things were _not_ _better_.

Adam had always taken that for granted, that John just seemed to understand him. He never apologized to John, figuring he would just _get it_ because he always seemed to. When Adam had to spend those long weeks cooped up in his father’s house, John had followed along. He’d claimed he didn’t want Adam to spend his birthday without any friends, but the unspoken bit was that he knew being in his father’s house would be hard on Adam, who’d grown used to the freedom of living up in New York. 

Also, living on his dad’s couch was _not_ working.

* * *

It was a good thing Adam had no intention of going to bed early because his makeshift bed - the couch - had been occupied while into the night. The liquor and snacks Mark, Shaun, and Eddie had bought earlier were littering the coffee table, along with empty beer bottles, Adam’s cigarettes, and a bunch of guitar picks. Somebody’s guitar was propped up against the side of the couch; there was the illusion of work, but nobody had picked it up yet. John was sitting there, the last of the holdouts, while Adam said in an equally lumpy arm chair across from him.

Shaun had finally left the room when he realized it was just the three of them left, backing out slowly. Nobody had left Adam and John alone before, and the tension was palpable.

“You really wanna do this?” Adam asked because he just couldn’t understand why John would want to walk back into the band - into his life - like this. Adam had been liquored up half the time when they fought, and for a long while after John left, but he could still remember the things John had said about him, his long list of reasons as to why he had to leave the band.

John’s face was gentle, his eyes soft as he looked at Adam. In that moment, Adam felt exposed because who had ever gotten close to him like John? 

“I started thinking about everything recently,” John admitted, and Adam wasn’t quite sure exactly what _everything_ was, but somehow he still understood. “I was missing it all.”

Adam raised his eyebrows, almost a little in surprise because he hadn’t expected that. He’d always imagined John had completely wiped all traces of him from his memory. While Adam had talked and talked to Angel, downing bottle after bottle, about everything he’d done wrong, he couldn’t imagine John spending even one breath on him.

But if he thought a little harder about it - and it wasn’t necessarily easy to do this with his brain swimming in alcohol - the John he’d known back then wouldn’t just _forget_ somebody. _Adam_ was the one who blacked people out of his memory, claiming to have no recollection of tours spent with people who would later lift some of his lyrics. 

“Missing it all?” Adam repeated as a question, a hint of a laugh in his voice. What did John miss? Adam’s excessive drinking, the lies, the drama that seemed to swirl around him? 

Maybe he’d internalized some of the things people had said about him.

“Wondering how you were,” John continued, taking a sip from his own cup.

The words hung in the air, the silence settling between them. John finished off his drink and then stood up, leaving Adam to look up at him. The sun was filtering in through the curtains, the sound of birds in the pecan trees somewhere in the distance. 

“Night,” John said, leaving his cup on the table and disappearing into the bedroom.

* * *

The downside to taking the couch was that the moment somebody started to make noise in the kitchen, Adam woke up. These days he could sleep through noise, having trained himself after living in vans and buses, but the nerves had kept him sleeping close to the surface. He could hear John admitting he’d been wondering about him echoing in his head, and he was holding on to that like a security blanket.

It turned out that Eddie was the one in the kitchen, already hard at work frying up some eggs and bacon. The moment Adam sat down at the counter, Eddie dug in, making fun of the way his hair was sticking up. 

“Well I had to sleep on a _couch_ ,” he answered, thanking Eddie for the plate of eggs and bacon he set before him. He felt Mark’s hand connect with the back of his head, apparently hearing his complaint about the couch - which was, in a way, a dig at Mark booking a place with only _four_ beds.

So maybe he deserved that smack to his head.

“Some of us don’t even have hair,” Shaun joked, starting the coffee pot before he took a plate from Eddie and sat down at the table. The smell of coffee permeated the air, and soon John emerged from the bedrooms, grabbing the first cup of coffee and taking a long sip of it, eyes closed.

Over breakfast - which was mostly quiet as everybody ate, the only sounds the clink of silverware against plates, long sips of coffee - Mark brought up working on something. He had demos that never became songs they could revisit, but nobody seemed too thrilled about working on something from the past - not when they’d all done a lot of growing up since then.

“I have something,” Adam volunteered, and after breakfast they all reconvened in the living room to work through it.

The song took most of the day. Eddie took Adam’s slow piece and sped it up, making it a bit more aggressive, and Mark had a drum part that would work well because of course he did.

This was familiar in the sense that this was the way they’d done things back when John and Shaun were in the band. Back then it had always been a team effort, but things had shifted in recent years. So for Adam, this felt like a return to form.

It felt like coming home.

Writing lyrics was an entirely different story. For the past few records, it had been a solo endeavor on Adam’s part. He’d never gotten close to the other members the way he had been with John, but there was something to be said about sharing a one bedroom apartment, the intense way they’d been thrust into popularity. He was still guarded, afraid of showing all his tender spots when this was still just an idea, so no, he wasn’t writing lyrics that day.

* * *

At some point, Eddie went back into town to pick up more provisions (booze), and day faded into night, their late night chatting session fueled by a lot of alcohol. The song remained untouched, incomplete without the lyrics.

“Don’t go waking me so early again,” Adam threatened when Eddie got up to go to bed around 3 am.

“Don’t expect breakfast then,” Eddie responded with a laugh, shutting the door behind him.

“I’ll take the couch tonight,” John offered, and Adam shook his head. He could be stubborn when he wanted to be, and he would not have John out-nice him this time.

“Are you sure?” John asked once more when he got up for the night. Mark and Shaun had abandoned them a few minutes ago, and Adam had stifled a yawn. John looked sympathetic, and Adam _knew_ he would give him the shirt off his back if he asked for it. Even after everything, that was John.

“Yeah, go, get some sleep,” Adam said, waving him off, and feeling around for the blanket he’d used to cover himself the previous night. 

“I don’t have to chug NyQuil in a sedan these days,” John teased, and Adam couldn’t help but to smile at the little memory of the way things used to be.

* * *

The house was still and quiet and dark when Adam woke up. His head was swimming from the alcohol as he stumbled through the hall to the bathroom, rather impressed with himself that he’d managed to get the right door on the first try. He could hear Mark’s snoring from his room, wondering how Shaun even managed to sleep with that.

John’s door was open, a soft glow illuminating the room. The bedroom light wasn’t on, but he was on his phone, tapping something out in the darkness. Adam felt a pull in his chest, as if some unseen string was tugging him towards John, and he found himself in the doorway.

“Adam?” John said, clicking off his phone and plunging the room into darkness.

Adam shut the door behind him, giving himself a minute for his eyes to adjust. The moonlight filtered in through the curtains so he could make out the shape of John in the bed, mostly contained to one side. 

There was more than enough room for Adam.

“John,” Adam said, his voice barely a whisper in the darkness. He crossed the floor to John’s bed, climbing into the empty side. He could hear the sheets rustling and feel the cheap bed shifting as John turned to face him.

“I’m sorry,” Adam finally said, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them. He didn’t give John any context, but he didn’t think John needed it. That was how it had been once between them, that John would just know what Adam was trying to say. Back when they were first starting out, when he was new to interviews, he’d turn into a stuttering mess and just give one look to John, who would step in. That was the kind of bond they had.

That was the kind of bond Adam wanted.

“I’m sorry,” John echoed, and he didn’t need to clarify because Adam understood him. 

Adam reached out, feeling for John in the darkness and meeting a bare shoulder, pulling him close and closing the gap between them so that he was inches from his face.

Adam wasn’t sure who made the next move. It didn’t matter. In a split-second, he couldn’t tell where his space ended and John’s began, because John’s hands were on his face and his were still on John’s shoulders, and they were kissing.

They were kissing.

The realization dawned on Adam but he didn’t pull away nor did he push John away. Adam wasn’t sure how they’d fallen into this so suddenly, but was it all that suddenly?

Seven years had stretched between them just hours ago, the distance seemingly insurmountable, but now his hands were feeling over John’s arms and mapping out the ways he’d changed and grown.

At some point, the kissing must have stopped, because Adam woke up in the bed he’d given up for John with John nowhere to be found.

Was this all some fucked up, alcohol-induced fever dream?

No, apparently, because when he gathered himself together enough to step out of the bedroom, the kitchen was full of life. Eddie was shouting at Mark about something and Shaun was laughing, and John was egging Eddie on. Adam slipped in silently, grabbing the last few drops of coffee and some buttered toast.

Nobody acknowledged that Adam wasn’t on the couch that morning.

* * *

“Can we do this?” Adam asked, finding John out back. He had a notebook, a pack of cigarettes, and a drink in his hands. John looked up from his own notebook and nodded, gesturing to the chair next to him and understanding perfectly what Adam meant.

“I have this,” John said, flipping over to a page.

“Lemme see.” Adam reached over and pulled John’s notebook towards him, trading it for his own. He lost himself in the familiar scrawl that was John’s handwriting, taking in how his writing had grown to include ideas on politics and religion. It wasn’t just lamenting over girls in an overdramatic way.

It barely registered that he’d given up his notebook to John without a second thought.

It was just what they did.

* * *

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch tonight,” John told Adam, sitting next to him on said couch. He knocked his knee against his. “There’s plenty of room,” he added, and Adam knew there was because he’d been in that bed last night and this _wasn’t_ all some fucked up, alcohol-induced fever dream.

So when John stood up to go to bed, long after everybody else, Adam did too. He grabbed the pillow and the blanket he’d taken from the bed at the start of the weekend, and went to the bedroom. He tossed them on the bed and fell onto it after them, shimmying under the covers before John emerged from the bathroom.

“I missed you,” Adam said as John flicked off the light, plunging them into the darkness. There was something about the darkness; he felt safe, secure in giving life to all of these thoughts. He reached out, feeling over the sheets until he hit John’s body.

“I missed you,” John echoed, and Adam was surprised at how familiar he was with him - even after all these years - that he could hear the smile there. He felt John’s hand move over his arm, pausing to blindly trace patterns against his skin. 

“You’ve a few more,” John said, and it took Adam a silent moment to realize he was talking about the tattoos that covered his arm now.

“Do you?” Adam asked, recalling how John had none while Adam had acquired more than a few during their years touring. He had what was practically a full sleeve now, artwork covering a body that was much broader than the last time he and John had shared a bed.

“No,” John answered, and Adam still had so many questions to ask but couldn’t because John was kissing him again.

The questions could wait.

Adam kissed back, and he couldn’t help but to catalog more differences between them and now. Tattoos aside, they had both grown up. Adam had still been a teenager when they first met, and now he could drink without schemes involving John’s ID. He’d bought (and sold) a house, and he’d nearly gotten married. In the seven years since he’d last seen John, he’d lived more life and done more growing up than he could have ever imagined. He hoped that all this kissing meant John saw that, that he’d forgiven Adam for that last tumultuous year and all the things they’d shouted at one another. 

Adam knew he’d forgiven John a while ago, even if he never told him. He’d been angry at him for so long, but he’d also started to recognize that he’d been a shitty person. He’d been drinking too much, trying to ignore all the self-loathing, and looking back on it, he wouldn’t have wanted to be around himself either.

“I’m sorry,” Adam whispered in the darkness when they took a second to catch their breath. He was still apologizing for the distance between them and everything that had happened all those years ago.

“Me too,” John said, pulling Adam closer still, until their bodies were practically flush with one another and all Adam could smell was beer and weed and the mint of John’s toothpaste. 

* * *

In the morning, Adam woke with his legs tangled with John’s, the sun through the blinds making stripes on the bed. He could hear the distant chatter in the kitchen, and those birds in the pecan trees, but he didn’t make any attempt to leave the bed. Instead, he grabbed the sheets that had bunched up around their ankles and tugged them back over their shoulders and cuddled back closer to John.

Nobody said anything when they emerged from the same bedroom. Remnants of breakfast were on the kitchen counter - cold eggs, dry toast, a half pot of coffee - and the guys were back in the living room. Eddie had a guitar, and Mark had his drum pad, and Shaun was looking on as they played the music they’d sorted out the other day.

There was something magical about it, the sound that had been in Adam’s head now at a faster speed. He grabbed the notebooks he and John had been writing in and flipped open to the page where they’d tried to arrange a song. John seemed to just understand and had a pen ready for him, looking over his coffee as Adam made a few tweaks here and there, the sounds of the chords reverberating through the house as he tried to hum out a melody for the words.

“Here,” John said, taking the pen from Adam’s hand, striking something out, and re-wording it. He’d picked up on the melody Adam had been humming and adjusted it accordingly.

Eddie stopped strumming, looking on as Adam looked up from the words. Adam couldn’t help the genuine smile that unfurled on his lips as he read what John had fixed, played it in his head. He’d been missing this connection, this sense of understanding one another without debate.

“Play,” he told Eddie, who didn’t need to be told twice. He started again, and Mark resumed the rhythm he’d been tapping out on his drum pad.

Adam was quiet for a minute, trying to find the right time to jump in with what he had written down and John tweaked.

When he finally did, he hadn’t been expecting John’s harmonies layering on top of his vocals. It almost distracted him, forced him to look over and catch John looking at him, working to figure out the harmonies in real time.

“See?!” Mark nearly yelled when they’d run through the song once more. The _told you so_ was evident in his voice, the excitement matched the excitement coursing through Adam’s veins, the excitement that was in the air. There was an electric energy in the room. They were on to something.

Adam looked over to John and felt like he was home.


End file.
